


Waking A Drowsy Tiger

by OracleGlass



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OracleGlass/pseuds/OracleGlass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Antoine is used to being disposable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking A Drowsy Tiger

Antoine is French. In England, that is something that he is constantly aware of – that he is a dirty foreigner, expected to be suave. They’re angry when he’s too tired to be charming, but he is clearly a suspicious person when he's seen as _too_ charming, especially as he's twirling their women around a dance floor in an intimate embrace. Still, he manages to make a living, here at the big hotel at the edge of the sea, dancing with the old and the young and the in-between. Mostly old, but that's the job, isn't it? Sometimes he smiles to himself, and the woman he dances with will demand to know what he’s smiling at, what he’s thinking. He turns it into a deft complement on her light feet, or how she looks in her dress, and they always smile back at him, and perhaps pay for private lessons later on. Sometimes they pay for more, if he accepts their awkward hints. The management turns a blind eye, as long as the patrons are happy.

Miss Vane is one of the first people in many months to treat him like something other than a handsome face and a pair of dancing pumps. She speaks some French, although her accent, she says apologetically, is not what it should be. This is true, although he would never say it to her. She is sophisticated, wary, and possessed of a self-deprecating style that is so very, very English. And she wants to know about Paul.

Doris and Charis have long since gone off, to a drink or a man (likely both) and the two of them have been left to talk while the cleaning lady sweeps the polished wood of the dance-floor. Miss Vane is easy to converse with, and he finds he is revealing more than he had planned to about Paul, himself, the life of a dancer. Miss Vane manages to be quietly sympathetic to the difficulty of earning one's bread by constructing dreams of romance to bored old women. Yet he never reads pity in her cool eyes, and that makes him unexpectedly relieved. He didn’t think he had that much pride left, but there it is.

Driven by the glares of the charwoman, they bid each other good night, and part.

A few days later, Miss Vane has relocated to Paul’s old rooms, which startles Antoine somewhat. He comes by one morning and chats with the landlady, who has a residual fondness for him from the days when he used to visit Paul. She calls down Miss Vane, and insists they all have a drink together. Miss Vane catches Antoine's eye and manages to convey amused resignation as the three of them sip tiny glasses of gin. As they leave, the landlady is reaching for the bottle to pour herself another knock. Miss Vane walks with him back to the Resplendent. Lord Peter Wimsey, she explains, is away chasing down a clue – something about Paul’s suicide razor, he gathers – and she should be working but can’t turn her mind to it. Once again, they end up talking late into the night. When she rises to leave, he catches her hand, and kisses the back of it. She looks surprised, then pleased, then startled at her own pleasure, and walks away quickly, flustered for the first time that he’s seen.

The third night, he walks back to her lodgings with her, and she draws him into her room, looking at him with a banked fire in her eyes. They make love slowly, his mouth at her collarbone, her hands slipping down along his back. He murmurs to her in French. She keeps her cries quiet, so the landlady won't have an excuse to be happily scandalized.

As he dresses to go, she holds out a hand to him, oddly formal in a half-tied dressing gown. “Thank you, Antoine. For...showing me it was still there.”

He needs no further explanation. Taking her hand, he bows over it, courtly in his rumpled clothes. “Mademoiselle, it was my pleasure.”


End file.
